WESTMINSTER
593
WESTMINSTER
Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canter-
bury, was dead before Elizabeth's ParUament had
finallj' broken the continuity of episcopal succession
in the English Church. Nearly three hundred years
passed away before the hierarchy was restored.
Nevertheless, as early as 1623, a vicar ApostoUc was
appointed for all England; and the country was
divided into four vicariates in 1088. The state of
Catholicism in the Archdiocese of Westminster to-day
is a development on the foundations laid by the suc-
cession of eleven vicars Apostolic in the London
District (see London) .
The beginning of the progress that has made the modern diocese must be dated from the passing of the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791, which brought freedom of teaching and worship. Throughout the ninety years previous the Catholic population of London remained stationary at about 20,000; while in the country parts of the London District, the numbers dropped from 5000 in 1746 to 4000 in 1773, the low-water mark of English Catholicism. Even towns in the London District, hke Canterbury and Colchester, did not possess a chapel. The vener- able Bishop Challoner laboured on the London mission for the last fifty j'ears of this depressing period, and died in the midst of the ruin wrought in his district by the Gordon Riots of 1780, occasioned by the first Relief Act. He will ever be memorable as the devoted pastor who guided the Church in England through the long, dark hour before the dawn. Though his end came in troublous times, a better day was already breaking. For in the very year of the second Relief Act, Bishop Douglass was able to say in a report to Rome: "The Church is now- beginning to flourish in oiu- metropolis"; and in the twenty years that followed, the Catholic population of the London District was considerably more than doubled.
The development of the missions and the provision of more decent places of worship were the most obvious external results of the Rehef Acts. The old chapels were rebuilt on a larger scale, and the next thirty years saw the rise of many new ones in places hitherto impossible. The arrival of the French emigres in Bishop Douglass's time, while helping to spread the spirit of toleration, gave a further stimulus to the starting of missions and the building of chapels. London had always enjoj-ed a unique advantage over the rest of the country in respect of Cathohc worship. This was due to the existence of the embassy chapels and, in the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, to the chapels maintained by the Catholic queens, Henrietta Maria and Catherine of Braganza. Even from Elizabeth's reign Cathohcs seem to have been able to worship with immunity in the embassy chapels. The Spanish Embassy possessed, in the time of Elizabeth and James I, the old monastic church attached to the town-house of the Bishops of Ely (this pre-Reformation church, probably built about 1339, was once again restored to Cathohc worship in 1879). In 1670, several Masses were said daily in the chapels of the Spanish, Portuguese, and Venetian Embassies; and Airoldi reported: "I was edified by the crowds of worshippers. Masses were said from eight o'clock to twelve, and during those hours the chapels were never empty". Several of these chapels were open to the pubhc in the latter part of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries. Bishop Petre pointed out to Propaganda their impor- tance, and begged Rome to persuade the Catholic Powers to provide larger chapels in convenient places. They suffered with the rest during the Gordon Riots, but were repaired or rebuilt, .and some of them have remained to our own day the parish churches of important London missions. The Sardinian Cliapcl, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which has registers daling from 1729, and which is said to have been founded in 1648, XV.— 38
was doubled in size. At one time in the eighteenth
century seven priests were attached to it, serving a
Catholic population of nearly 14,000; in 1814 there
was a Cathohc population of 7000 served by four or
five priests. In 1799 Bishop Douglass took over the
lease of the chapel and converted the ambassador's
house into a presbytery, the mission being hence-
forward supported by the congregation. The old
church, built by Inigo Jones and enlarged by Sir
Christopher Wren, was standing until 1909, when it
had to be abandoned to make room for the London
County Council improvements in connexion with the
new highway Kingsway, and the present church was
built a short distance off. The Spanish Embassy
always provided a public chapel. The present mis-
sion of Spanish Place was set on a permanent footing
in 1792, when Father Hus.sey, F.R.S. (afterwards
Bishop of Wat erford and first President of Maynooth),
built the chapel which was used until the new Gothic
church, one of the most beautiful in London, was
opened in 1890. The Warwick Street Chapel was
first built in 1730 for the Portuguese Embassy. Its
registers date from 1747, about which year it was
attached to the Bavarian Embassy. It was rebuilt
some eight years after the Gordon Riots, and still
stands to-day, as the parish church of London's most
aristocratic quarter. The French, Portuguese, Vene-
tian, and Neapolitan Governments also maintained
chapels where pubhc worship was carried out more or
less attractively during the eighteenth century.
Other missions that had been conducted in fear and trembUng through the eighteenth century now found their opportunity. Soho is one such. It was "Little Ireland", the Cathohc centre of the London Irish, and also contained the towm houses of the Cath- ohc gentry, who "formed each spring one united colony of the faithful", hence known as "The Holy Land". A large hall in Carlisle House was fitted up by Father O'Leary in 1792, and continued in use for a hundred years until Canon Vere opened the present St. Patrick's, Soho. One or more "Mass-houses" existed at Moorfields, clo.se to the City of London, from the beginning of the eighteenth century. The old chapel, along with the schools, was utterly de- stroyed in the Gordon Riots, and a new one, St. Paul's Moorfields, was fitted up in a dwelling house. The Catholic population increased so rapidly, from 4200 in 1791 to 12,700 in 1816, that a large church had to be built. It was opened in 1820, and became the principal church of the vicars Apostolic, three of them being buried there. In 1852 it was enlarged, and served as Wiseman's pro-cathedral. Manning was consecrated there in 1865. Ten missions have been formed from the original one. In 1899, the dis- trict aroimd St. Mary Moorfields having long ceased to be a residential quarter, the church was sold and replaced by a smaller one. The old riverside chapel at Virginia Street in the East End was replaced by a new one in 1780. Its Catholic population increased from 7000 in 1805 to 16,000 in 18.50, and many new missions have since been established in its neighbour- hood. The principal church of the district is now the beautiful Gothic church of St. Mary and St. Michael, in Commercial Road, opened in 1850.
Great numbers of the French clergy and nobility came over to Bishop Douglass's district after the outbreak of the French Revolution. At one time there were as many as 5 archbishops, 27 bishops, and .5000 priests in London. Eight chapels were opened for their u.se, towards the building of which Protes- tants and Catholics alike subscribed. All but one were closed by 1814, on the return of the exiles to France. Thi.s one, the chapel of St. Louis in Little George Street, opened in 1799, was later given the title of "Ch.ipel Royal of France", and continued to be .scrvcci by l'"rench i)riests until it was closed in 1911, shortly after the death of Mgr. Toursel. The exiled
